About Those Advertisements in Golf Magazine

or
Why Grandpa Has a Boner

There is an ad for a dick hardening drug on TV that depicts a happy older couple walking along a romantic beach. The imagery is fairly obvious: Gushing surf and rigid mountain peaks. They want to leave things to your imagination, but they don’t want your imagination to wander too far from the subject at hand. The message they want to leave you with is that if you take their product, you’ll be smashing that granite spire into a pile of gravel; you’ll be flowing like Hawaiian surf. At the bottom there is a line that says, “See our ad in Golf Magazine.”

Let me just say that there is nothing funny about erectile dysfunction—nothing at all. There is something funny about, “See our ad in Golf Magazine.” They didn’t say to see their ad in The New Yorker, or Harper’s, or Road and Track, or Guns and Ammo. They said to see their ad in Golf Magazine. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions. I’ll let you use your imagination. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Take your time.

There’s no hurry.

OK, did you come to the same conclusions as I? I came to two conclusions. Either golfers have the most flaccid putters around, or golfers are the only demographic which has the disposable income necessary for dick hardening drugs. If my dick didn’t work, I’d want to walk around hitting something with a steel club, too. If I had erectile difficulties, I’d also want to be able to afford medication. I’d want enough money to afford a transplant, if necessary.

I hate to sound like a broken record on this subject, but I can’t help but think of the implications these male fertility products may have on human evolutionary projection. What will it mean for our species when a heretofore irrelevant element—impotent older men—suddenly begins to contribute to the gene pool? Will these men produce impotent offspring? Will their sons be prone to lie about their handicaps, both on and off the course? As it turns out, the pharmaceutical companies are way ahead of me on this point. They have already begun marketing Viagra for Teens® which comes in four different flavors.

Erectile dysfunction drugs also open up a series of ethical questions. Is it cheating to use Viagra if you are a male porn star? As straight and narrow as the porn industry may be, can we rely on them to self-regulate their industry and require drug testing for their employees? Are we willing to sit back and let our beloved porn industry become as sleazy and drug-dependent as professional football and baseball?

Then we need to examine what the long-term use of these drugs has on the health of patients. Doctors are just now seeing cases of a condition known as “Viagra Frostbite.” Men who use erectile dysfunction drugs on a daily basis begin to feel numbness in their other extremities because of lack of blood. Most sufferers consider the amputation of ears, toes, and fingers a small price to pay for their constant boners. “I’d let you cut off my head if I could get more wood,” was what one habitual user admitted shortly before passing out after a 36-hour binge.